


beneath trees, where no one is dying

by okayantigone



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-19 13:05:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18136115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: no one had decided saving him, or even coming back, was worth their time and effort. milluki's life.





	beneath trees, where no one is dying

 his siblings leave.

 

it’s slow going, at first, almost unnoticeable. alluka’s never really been his sibling, so she doesn’t count. but killua leaves. the little asshole _stabs_ him, and _leaves._

he could have taken his damn heart out witht hose claws. he was laid up in medical for weeks with his punctured lung – not that it really slowed his workload any, what with most of his jobs being easy to complete remotely. he could just work on his laptop, dispatching drones, and outsourcing to self-driving cars that crashed mysteriously, and phones that inexplicably exploded in their owner’s hands, compromising pictures leaking online, leading to desperate suicides – milluki had never in his life enjoyed physical effort, and he was _never_ going to take a single step over the minimum necessary to ensure his success.

 

and mom – poor mom, she cried, and cried, and _howled_ with pain- the scar over her eye wouldn’t ever go away, and she’d have cloudy vision – good thing she aimed with her right eye anyway.

 

  1. killua left. it happened, milluki was told. children that age rebelled. he’d never rebelled, and illumi hadn’t either, but apparently some children did, and killua was one of those children. whatever.



 

killua came back. or rather, illumi brought killua back by the scruff of his neck, like the unrepentant irreverent, spoiled little shit he was. milluki didn’t care one way or the other. killua _wasn’t_ sorry. in his defense, he didn’t _have_ to be sorry. he just had to say the magic words, and all would be forgiven, etc, etc. he was the heir, after all, so he could do whatever the hell pleased him, and then just get away with it. if he said “i’m sorry, and i won’t do it again,” he could just go right on doing it, until the next time he got caught.

 

milluki _tried_ to give him a clue. “just say you’re sorry.” he’d demanded. that’s _all_ killua had to do. simple as that. not like mom switching milluki’s morphine pump off because he hadn’t tried hard enough to keep killua from leaving, nevermind that killua has straight up attempted to _gut_ him to get out.

 

and then… then the strangest thing happened. someone _came._ someone came _for_ killua. to get him out. to stop him from hurting, though milluki strongly suspected none of these literal children knew the first thing about pain the way he and kill did.

 

and not only had they come for killua, but the butlers had _let_ them. had _wanted_ them to come, to get killua out. as though the butlers had somehow decided that maybe killua was being _treated unfairly._

 

the last time he’d asked tsubone to bring a dinner plate up to his room, she’d pretended not to hear him, and he just hadn’t felt up to making it into a problem.

 

so killua… killua gets to talk to dad and leave. just… _walks away._ like it’s nothing. like this family is nothing, like none of them mean anything to him. milluki has to go through four butlers, and make an appointment four weeks in advance if he needs his dad for anything more than passing pleasantries.

 

he isn’t bitter. he is _not._ he has nothing to be bitter about. that’s the first thing illumi taught him. that he had no reason to be jealous.

 

milluki remembers a time before killua was born. the memories are dim, like sun-worn polaroid pictures, but they are there. illumi, his insanely, amazingly cool niichan, so powerful, so self-possessed, already working on his needle technique, the heir to the family. one day, milluki knew, illumi would be in charge of the whole of kukuroo mountain, and when people thought “zoldyck”, they’d think of him first, the same way when people thought “zoldyck” they thought of his dad, whereas once they’d thought of his grandfather.

 

those days had been so bright, dappled with light. illumi had been obliging when milluki wanted a spar, and generous in sneaking him snacks, bringing back weird candies from his jobs. mother had smiled more. when she was pregnant with kill, heavy and big, they’d help her down the stairs, and she’d call them her handsome little gentlemen.

 

then for a while after kill was born, it had been just as good, except now there was a baby.   
  
“you should talk to him,” silva had said, “he’ll learn to speak faster if you do.”

 

milluki had never been a very talkative child, but he’d been perfectly content to sit in the baby’s room with his laptop, and practice draining the bank accounts of inconvenient persons – a rather lucrative side-gimmick he’d developed on commission for a client in swardani city, who liked to see his enemies reduced to nothing before taking them out himself. and hell – milluki made nice commission on it.

 

from a plump, fat little baby, kill had grown into a well-sized toddler, and unleashed hell upon the entirety of kukuroo mountain.

 

and then, one day, illumi had gone into milluki’s room, without knocking as he was wont to do, spitting out blood, bruised, and his face splotchy with fury, his eyes red rimmed. he’d looked furious, leaking so much murderous intent, for a moment milluki feared for his own life.

 

“they’ve replaced me,” he’d said, his voice so quiet, barely a whisper. “kill is going to be the next heir to the family.”

 

and milluki hadn’t understood. but he had been _angry._ illumi was there _first._ illumi should have been the heir – those were the _rules!_

 

“thye just told me,” illumi continued tightly. “everyone was downstairs. mother, and kill, and our grandparents, and the new baby.”

 

no one had called milluki down. that didn’t matters. what was important was how _unfair_ they were being to illumi.

 

“what will you do now?”   
  
illumi had looked confused. “nothing?”

 

and he’d proceeded to do just that. one day milluki had had an older brother. the next day – illumi had simply disappeared, more silent than a butler, going on jobs that overlapped, barely home at all, except for then he needed to help dad train killua, and then gone away, as though he’d decided simply, that coming back to the house was too much effort.

 

it wasn’t _fair._ the adults had decided they didn’t want illumi, and he’d decided he didn’t want them in return. and he’d turned his back on them. and on milluki too.

 

and then one day, milluki had watched, before his very eyes, as his brother erased hisoka morow’s contact name from his phone, and renamed the contact “ _handsome clown prince”_ and started texting without punctuation, which in illumi’s language equated to a love confession.

 

he hadn’t left the family. not _yet._ but milluki backread his messages, and traced his past calls, and _knew_ that in his heart of hearts, illumi had made up his mind. and hadn’t told him.

 

these days, no one ever told him anything.

 

it was nearly three weeks since he’d last seen kalluto – this delicate, baby bird of a sibling, that seemed forever struggling to decide if he was milluki’s little brother or little sister, that his father finally deigned to inform him kalluto had joined the phantom troupe and was not to be further contacted or communicated with.

 

milluki wondered if his parents realized that none of his siblings were coming back.

 

“well, at least you aren’t going anywhere,” he told alluka in the cameras, not that she could hear.

 

then killua came back. for alluka.

 

milluki had almost expected it. there had been a part of him that wondered if kill would go into his room too, grab him by the hand and say “and you’re coming with us too”. he’d have gone.

 

but of course, killua didn’t. and of course illumi came back. for killua, always. to get him back, always.

 

milluki wondered if anyone had ever even noticed that he was right there. he’d never walked out. he’d never walked away. he always came back, and put himself away with the rest of his collection, mint condition, still in box.

his siblings had all gone off on their own adventures, doing their magnificent things, and that was fine by him. he wasn’t bitter, and he wasn’t jealous. he’d always been perfectly content with his hom eon kukuroo mountain. his room, with its soothing color scheme, his shelves of beautiful collectibles, his state of the art computer and gaming consoles, his king-size bed, with 100% silk everything.

 

he’d jacked the house’s main air conditioning controls, and kept the heating up in his wing in summer too, so it was always nice and warm, and his windows, covered with thick blackout curtains lead into a spacious balcony overlooking their beautiful backyard. so many picnics on those lush grasslands.

 

why would he ever want to leave his home? why would he ever be unhappy here? why would it bother him that no one had ever bothered to come back for him.

 

even the butlers didn’t think he was worth saving, but there was nothing _to_ be saved from. it was just what having a family was like. the other didn’t like it, so they’d left, so _fine. he_ had nothing to complain about.

 

he wasn’t the most talented, or the strongest, there was nothing interesting about him, _fine._ he wasn’t the eldest, or the youngest, or the middle one, his kill count wasn’t higher than anyone else’s, and was too fat, and took too much after mom, and his nen type wasn’t ideal for combat, _fine. fine._ it didn’t matter. he still remembered a time when they’d all been _so_ very happy here, when illumi had snuck him sweets, that he’d snuck killua in return. when he’d told killua to talk to baby alluka so she’d learn to talk like them, when kalluto had first gotten in grandmother’s treasure throve of jewelry and old-fashioned makeup.

 

_sure_ they’d got beat. sure the sweets were laced with aconite, and poison ivy and what not. sure, alluka had grown up into something foreign and evil and terrifying. but they’d all grown up _fine_ hadn’t they? no one had _done_ anything. no one had _said_ anything.

 

the butlers had butlered, going about their day, and every night, mother put him to bed with a kiss to his forehead, nevermind if she’d been tearing his fingernails out literally ten minutes earlier, and dad always gave him the best gifts – handguns, and mini tasers that he could take apart and study and improve on.

 

they’d been _fine._ grandpa had taken him on his first airship ride to heaven’s arena when he was six. they’d made a day of it. grandpa had taken him to all the various restaurants, and they’d watched a floor master fight to keep his title, and then grandpa had left without him.

 

he’d made his way back home. three years, almost. his time was only slightly worse than illumi’s. there had been no fanfare when he came back. he had no way of knowing if there had been any when illumi did. he’d been too young then. when kill came back, tsubone gave him cake.

 

it was fine. he wasn’t jealous. killus was the heir, so he got babied. whatever.

 

milluki had been out, in the real world. he’d lived in heaven’s arena for three years. he’d seen parents and children. he knew what a family looked like, and he knew _his_ was better. nevermind the broken bones, and the screaming matches which mama just couldn’t _help._

_of course_ he’d come back. and then he just hadn’t left. he hadn’t wanted to. he’d seen enough of the real world, he’d had enough of fighting in real life, and kukuroo mountain was his _home._

and his siblings had all left, one after the other. first, the weird village child had come for killua, then the clown had come for illumi, then the ryodan had come for kalluto, and then killua had come back – for alluka, and no one had come for him, and it was _fine._

he didn’t need to be saved. he asked canary to bring his mail, and she acted like she didn’t hear him, so he went down the stairs himself, because he didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. he never did.

 

it’s not like he _enjoyed_ getting in fights. he picked up the pile of letters- most of them his subscriptions, and a few boxes he knew had goodies in them that would fill in gaps in his connection, as well as a game he’d promised to test for the makers – _and he was so mad at killua for getting to play greed island and not inviting him along, goddamn it, kill, he could have helped –_ and then passed by the kitchen to fix up a plate.

 

his cooking was subpar, really – mostly just copying videos from the internet, but _anyone_ could crack an egg into fried rice, put soy sauce on, and call it a meal.

 

he sensed his grandfather coming in – not zeno, maha. he greeted politely, half-bowing.

 

“it’s been very quiet lately,” maha said. “where _are_ the rest of your rambunctious siblings?”

 

maha rarely concerned himself with the comings and goings of the family. he was so old at this point he may as well have been dead.

 

“they aren’t here,” milluki said through a mouthful of rice.   
  
“oh?”

 

milluki shrugged, and picked up his pile of mail in one hand, and his plate in the other.   
  
“i’m the only one who’s left,” he called out over one shoulder, and walked slowly back to his room.

 

one of the new butlers – the one who were meant to replace gotoh and such – held the door open for him and bowed. “i would have made you dinner, if you’d said you were hungry, young master,” he said.

 

milluki shrugged, so as not to make a big deal out of it. “i’ll call for you next time.”

 

he let the door close behind him. as if.

 

no one had ever been on his side before. no one had decided saving him, or even coming back, was worth their time and effort. and that was fine, because he didn’t need saving from anything, and he didn’t need anyone on his side, because he had his family -the best family in the world. the zoldyck family. and kukuroo mountain was his home, that he would never leave again.

 

nevermind that no one had noticed him staying here either.

 


End file.
